


Of Scars and Stories

by Dain



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Disabled Character, Lichtenberg Figures, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 13:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2272350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dain/pseuds/Dain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aang and Zuko are adorned by scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Scars and Stories

Aang and Zuko are adorned by scars that fan out across their bodies, delicate red lines that imitate the form of the lightning they were born from. Katara loves tracing them, running her fingers along the paths left behind from the terrible power that had wracked their bodies all those years ago. She had been the one by their sides after their respective injuries, the one who had patched them back up and brought them back from the brink, and so the lightning had drawn the three of them together, binding them together as one. She thinks the small feathers of the scars look like frost, red frost crawling across their skin, fire leaving behind the imprint of ice.

Aang’s scars center around a large, puckered mark, radiating outwards from the initial point of contact in ever-smaller fingers. The brutality of the center is offset by the delicacy of the rest, violence disguising itself as beauty. They still experience pain in their back, often carrying a cane, and though Katara and Zuko do their best to alleviate some of that pain, their methods are temporary at best. Pain is something Aang lives with, a constant reminder of the battle underneath the streets of Ba Sing Se and of the scars they cannot see.

The hub of Zuko’s network of scars is more subtle, a red, raised patch in the center of his chest from which the smaller tendrils unwind; the center clearly leads into its branches, and there is no clear line where one ends and the other begins. His wound has healed more completely than Aang’s and no longer causes him pain, but Katara knows it bothers him simply for being another mark left on his body – and by another member of his family. She’s made it clear that she’s willing to ask the Northern Water Tribe for a new vial of spirit water, but he turns her down whenever the subject is brought up. He wants the reminder, even if it’s etched onto his skin.

Sometimes Katara feels that she has the memory of every injury she’s healed resting in her hands, and when she passes a hand gently over Zuko’s chest or Aang’s back she imagines she can feel herself there, as if her healing had worked some little bit of herself into the scar tissue. She lives in the other two, as much as they live in her, and together they can try to hold on.


End file.
